Suckers who downloaded the new Huffington app-magazine-thing hoping for page after page of sideboob were bitterly disappointed to instead find some superlong expose about Politico, America’s number one morning-winning beltway-news-producing destroyer of worlds. The thing was written by Michael Calderon, whom ascended Wonkette deity Ken Layne once called “an actual pleasant human being we’ve actually dealt with on the telephone and in person,” so we’re going to believe that every word of it is true, especially the part about how life inside the Politico’s walled compound is essentially a gruesome, bloody battle to the death, just like in the hit children’s movie The Hunger Games. That sort of pressure may explain why a Politico reporter went a little off script and went on TV and said that Mitt Romney hated black people, or loved white people, which is basically the same thing, right?

Joe Williams is Politico’s White House correspondent, and this is the thing he said on one of the MSNBC panel shows where people scream at each other:

Romney is very, very comfortable it seems with people who are like him. That’s one of the reasons why he seems so stiff and awkward in some town hall settings, why he can’t relate to people other than that. But when he comes on Fox and Friends, they’re like him, they’re white folks who are very much relaxed in their own company.

So, uh, yeah, saying that Mitt Romney is more comfortable with people exactly like him, with one of those “like him” qualities being race, is not exactly the same as calling him a Klansman, we don’t think? See, one of the things about being white in America — about being part of a privileged majority generally — is that you can be in a racially homogeneous group and it seems totally natural! You’re the default! You don’t see the race of the people you hang out with! It’s cozy! But believe it or not, America does not entirely consist of white people (or even white people like the kind on Fox and Friends), which means that this comfort level could actually be something of a campaign liability.

And maybe this is something that an African-American reporter like Joe Williams (oh, did we mention he was black? Didn’t think we needed to, people that conservatives yell at for being racists are always black) would notice? But anyway everyone’s really mad about this (“everyone” = people on Breitbart.com) and now Politico has suspended Williams, to give him time to recover from prolonged exposure to Barack Obama’s black mind control rays.

The real question is: how does this fit into today’s insufferable inside-baseball revelations about the gladiatorial hellscape that is the Politico newsroom? Obviously Williams’ statement is part of some larger game to dominate his enemies within the organization, but we can’t figure if it’s a daring attack, like when Katniss tried to blow up the Careers’ food supply, or a desperate ploy, like when Katniss and Peeta threatened to kill themselves and embarrass the Capitol’s gamemakers (YEAH JUST PRETEND YOU DON’T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT NERDS).

Williams also made some dick jokes about the Romney’s on his Twitter, which is upsetting because that’s really more our thing. Also, the following video should put to rest the notion that Mitt Romney is anything less than 100 percent natural and spontaneous around black people:

About the author

Josh was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, leaving him with a love of chicken wings and a tendency to say “pop”. He taught ancient Greek and Roman history to undergraduates before fleeing from academia in terror; worked for a failed San Francisco dot-com that neglected to supply him with stock options or an Aeron chair; lived in Berlin, where he mostly ate Indian and Ethiopian food; finished in third place on his sole Jeopardy! appearance (the correct answer was “Golda Meir”); and was named 2007 Blogger of the Year by The Week, for obvious reasons.
Josh is the creator/editor of COMICS CURMUDGEON (which you should read) and does geeky editing and writing about geeky things such as "the Java programming industry for JavaWorld." He lives in Baltimore with his wife Amber and his cat Hoagie.

Meanwhile, John Nolte's column, at Big Journalism sports a headline that says Politico's web traffic, because of their Obama bent, has plummeted recently, from 4.229 million to 4.165 million unique visitors during a recent period. That's a dip of one and one-half percent. Wow.

SayItWithWookies

Well see, there was an article somewhere (salon, maybe?) recently about Rmoney having a negative buzz — unlike the whackos of yesteryear, where you just had to put the name "Palin" in a headkline and it would get clicks, the opposite effect is happening with Romney.

So of course, in keeping with the Rovian strategy of using one's opponents strengths as his weakness, the GOP is projecting Romney's weakness onto — of all things — Politico. But this is the same party that gave Orrin Hatch the boot for being a RINO, so make as much sense of that as you will.

Indiepalin

And now that Breitbart story has been altered, removing the actual numbers and linking it to a story in the Daily Caller which puts the dip in traffic at 15%, or ten times what the story said originally. Gee, I just don't know WHO to believe!

Kind of like Florida aggressively pursuing voter registration based on .00001 percent violations?

SayItWithWookies

Politico — finally exposed as the tool the liberals and gays and negros and such use to keep whitey down.

Callyson

The editor’s memo added that “Politico journalists have a clear and inflexible responsibility to cover politics fairly and free of partisan bias.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, I needed that…

PuckStopsHere

This is not at all fair. Mitt isn't comfortable around anybody.

Lionel[redacted]Esq

Mittens Liable!!! He always seems comfortable when He is on Fox and Hannity is licking his ass.

SorosBot

Now, he's comfortable around his fellow rich plutocrats.

http://simplyleftbehind.blogspot.com/ actor212

Their bank accounts are just the right height

Guppy

Anybody human, that is.

emmelemm

Also excluding: dogs, and horses.

SorosBot

As always, the big crime is always not pretending America has been racism free since 1964.

Lionel[redacted]Esq

America has never been racist!!! Why, the Founders actually made a special section in the Constitution telling us just how special negros were!

http://dismalpseudoscientist.wordpress.com Tyrannically_Joe

I mean, proof that America was never racist lies in the fact that the Founders Worked Tirelessly from Day 1 to free the slaves, it was just so very hard to set a public policy that they allegedly all agreed on, so the fact that it took two generations and the bloodiest war in American history to finally wrap that slavery issue up was really the best they could do, even though pretty much every other nation had abolished slavery earlier with far less bloodshed. But that was actually the Founders' plan all along, I guess?

Negropolis

Also, remember, the Civil war wasn't about slavery, it was about states' rights!

Willardbot9000_V2.5

Yeah….you did forget the one nod to America being racist once, the ever-present conservative (totally not racist or assholishly condescending) comeback "haven't we done ENOUGH for you people?" As if the '64 Civie Act and '65 Voting Rights Act (which officially ended racism FOREVER) somehow undid 400 years of damage like a flick of the wand. Nowadays with that particular wingnut truism in the minds of all right wingers they can confidently declare black people aren't oppressed (Republicans ended racism by the way, not those racist Democrats who just ya know…shepparded and signed the bill at their own peril) but instead "blahs are lazy" because racism, racial oppression and white privilege ended in '65 you see….I need to go lie down.

Callyson

Oh, and I love how, in the video, the girl in the black and pink jacket is not about to shake Mittens' hand after that "Who let the dogs out?" crap. Good for her…

OzoneTom

Haha, I saw this article then it disappeared from the front page.

jfruh

Your Editrix is picky about things like mispelling "hunger" in headlines.

SayItWithWookies

There was probably a big to-do at Wonkette World Headquarters about whether it was "a Hunger Games-esque Battle" or "an Hunger Games-esque Battle."

http://simplyleftbehind.blogspot.com/ actor212

"Huger" worked so much better tho!

Lionel[redacted]Esq

You know who else was picky about misspelling things?

http://dismalpseudoscientist.wordpress.com Tyrannically_Joe

Adolph Hilter?

LetUsBray

Dan Quayle?

Negropolis

Catholic school marms?

Guppy

She won't be publishing anything by Pamela Geller any time soon, then?

NellCote71

Bravo/a.

http://wonkette.com Chill_Bill

Mitt had the Blah vote in the bag, but this changes everything.

DrunkIrishman

Romney is more awkward than I was going through puberty.

SayItWithWookies

Like many church leaders, Rmoney is still going through puberty — just not his own.

I don't know what he's talking about. Romney's perfectly comfortable with the people who take care of his lawn, wash his car, drive him around, wipe up his drool when he tries to think what a donut is….

BarackMyWorld

I wonder how he'll be during the debates, when there's a negro on stage with him….

Chick-Fil-Atheist™

He'll check to make sure his wallet is in his jacket. Several times.

Cicada

Herman Cain is crying right now. He was the Great Black Hope, dammit. Now everyone has forgotten he even existed.

mavenmaven

Stiff.

RavenRant

Until you unzip him. Princess Ann has assured us, he's never stiff when you unzip him.

BigSkullF*ckingDog

Romney: "That Barack is surprisingly clean and articulate you know, for a president. "

Willardbot9000_V2.5

Two thoughts on how that will all go down: A) Romney will have horse blinders on making it impossible for him to look directly at Barry and
B) It will be sort of like invasion of the body snatchers only instead of yelling "ahhhhhhh!" in that high pitch alien voice Mittens will yell "bllllaaaahhhhH!" while pointing his bony finger at Obama, this will occur the moment Barry slams him and his comeback protocols can't respond quickly enough. Interestingly, this is the way Santorum, Gingrich, Paul and Rove all handle close encounters of the blah kind…I think they may all come from the same cruel planet…need Alex Jones to get on this one.

Schmannnity

In the video, why didn't Romney fake getting pinched on the ass by the black woman?

jacimi

At least he didn't bring up Romney's aversion to vaginas.

RavenRant

With all the dog whistles and incendiary crap on the Politico, this gets Joe Williams a suspension? White people's imperviousness to shame floors me. And, yes, I'm of the pasty persuasion.

Most of those are great, but #11 definitely veers into asshole rant territory.

I think I first met my now-girlfriend when she posted online an incensed tirade against that item. Not that I can blame her, I'd be pretty angry too, if someone described me as "atheistically [sic] pleasing, but very annoying".

I hate over half of the things on the the list. Guess I'm not as white as I thought.

DahBoner

I'm part White, but I can't prove it (no papers)…

mavenmaven

Wasn't it Ann Romney who said Mitt should "let his dogs out"?

poorgradstudent

I assume Romney's less awkward around the non-rich when he's hunting poors on his island compound.

Extemporanus

I caught the entire segment in which Joe "Mama!" Williams went all gangsta (i.e. explained reality in calm, measured, banal terms), and immediately thought to myself, "OH SNAP!! Dude's gonna get an earful back at the POLITI-cave!"

The fact that his particular comment jumped out at me in a four person conversation where each of the other conversants also used words such as "white", "black", "people", and "the" can only mean one thing: I am a horribly horrible racist who is entirely too familiar with the intra-office goings-on of a morning wood-sporting online political troll factory, and thus deserve to only have one friend in the whole wide world, with that friend being a cat.

Even lazy-ass Jim Newell, who writes comedy for Wonkette, posted his version of the Gregory Craig/Goldman story [something Politico was flogging as a "scoop"] a whole 10 hours before the magic Playbook email went out to a loathsome group of Beltway people who so hate their spouses that they need to scan Mike Allen’s Best of the Web links before saying “Good morning” or “Let’s get a divorce.”

When Romney hugs the Black girl with his left hand, he vigorously pats his thigh with his right hand. That's the same thing I do when I am getting a vaccination.

bobbert

Is that like Bush wiping himself off on Clinton's shirt?

Wadisay

Q. Just out of curiosity, if you are a journalist who believes that a candidate is really, really twitchy around anyone but rich, old white men, how do you say that in a way acceptable to Politico's editorial geniuses?

A. Begin the sentence with, "Though not as comfortable as Obama seems around rouge preachers and Marxist pseudo-intellectuals,…"

So let me get this straight, Arianna is skimming the curd off the top of Huffpo with an iPad, and wants to charge people for it? Perhaps she should be charged with aggravated aggregation.

bobbert

Perhaps she should be ignored?

http://dismalpseudoscientist.wordpress.com Tyrannically_Joe

To be fair, it was also pretty clear from the way he said "people who are like him" that he didn't mean that Mittens is a racist, per se. Mittens is also insanely awkward and uncomfortable when he's around literally anybody who works for a living.

Good God, what if he had gone on "Morning Joe" and calmly explained the beliefs and responsibilities of a bishop in the Mormon Church? They would have tied him to a tree and given him a choice of keeping his dick or his writin' hand.

mormos

"But believe it or not, America does not entirely consist of white people"

But it's still okay to say the negro president hates white people, right?

Come here a minute

So unfair to play that video as if Mitt is unaware of current trends in Urban music. That was from long ago, the 2008 campaign. The song was only eight years old!

TribecaMike

I read this twice and I have absolutely no idea what the fuck it's about.

Anyway, does this bar stool make me look too short?

Negropolis

You see, Blahs are the real racists.

TribecaMike

I'll attempt to do you one better, my friend. The real real racists are presently residing on 145 Smoot Drive, Pleasantville, Any State USA, and they're all cops who take the condition of their deck umbrellas much more seriously than they do the civil rights of those they're sworn to protect and serve.

Willardbot9000_V2.5

This is that same cute game of "racist coy" Republicans always like to play; we saw this with the teabaggers. Even though Stormfront and other bigoted sites called the teabaggers fertile ground to recruit to their disgusting ideology all claims of racist, drunken white people were completely fabricated. Oh, and someone needs to go remind the Breitfarters that Breitfart is still dead….they need this daily, every single hour until that fucking site finally changes its name.

ttommyunger

This would be more credible if Politico wasn't Cheney's personal mouthpiece, which it is.